1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus and an image processing method of performing tone correction on a moving image or a still image being inputted.
2. Description of the Related Art
An area in which the face of a person is displayed (hereinafter, referred to as a “face area”) in a moving image or a still image is an important area to which viewers pay particular attention. Therefore, with a photographing device such as a digital camera, etc., the detection of the face area is generally carried out.
On the other hand, with display equipment such as a television, etc., local tone correction is generally carried out for the purpose of enhancing contrast, reducing local extinction of tone in dark region and bright region, or the like. For example, there is cited processing such as one in which tone correction is carried out by dividing an image into a plurality of areas so as to obtain local statistical information (e.g., brightness information) of the image, and locally controlling a gamma curve that is used for tone correction, based on the statistical information thus obtained.
In the patent gazette of Japanese patent application laid-open No. 2009-59119, there is disclosed a tone correction system in which an image is divided into a plurality of block areas in order to obtain a suitable tone for the face part of a person, and the brightness of an input image is corrected based on the brightness information of the plurality of block areas and the brightness information of the face part.